


kiss goodbye to the sky with diamonds

by moonsoaked



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mild Smut, Pale Kink (Homestuck), Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Praise Kink, Pre-Epilogue, Psychological Trauma, Species Dysphoria, Teen Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-02-24 03:35:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23536582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonsoaked/pseuds/moonsoaked
Summary: Jade Harley does not want to float.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Jade Harley & Dave Strider & Karkat Vantas, Jade Harley & Karkat Vantas, Jade Harley/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	1. now or never now

Five thousand years before the start of their future, Jade does not look up at the sky.  
  
She resents the pinpricks of light poking through the curtain of night. In another timeline, Jade knows she would have loved this, a reminder of the night sky on a island she once called home. Accompanied by dreams of cold nights spent together with friends stargazing and mapping new constellations.

Now, Jade knows space intimately; how it swallows you whole, never holding you steady, setting you adrift in a cold vacuum that smells like burnt steak. What scares Jade is not this knowledge, but that it no longer applies to her. Untethered is her new familiar and she hates it.

The ground is firm she reminds herself. Bodies are warm. Heartbeats, steady. False guarantees that tenuously ground her. Emptiness is the guilty precept that she runs from. She is so happy to be with her friends, she is so happy to be close, she never wants to let go.

They are visiting the ocean. It's one of their many outings these days. A respite from hours in the ectobiology lab and caring for babies and grubs.  
  
Jade curls her toes and focuses on the feeling of beach pebbles against her feet as she walks along the shoreline. She picks up a flat rock, draws her arm back and skips it across the water. It skims the top, bounding far across the surface before disappearing beneath the waves.

Jade laughs, throwing up her hands in victory, 'A new record! At least on Earth C, I think?' She had had a lot of practice on her island.

'Did you do anything like on this Alternia, Karkat?'

'Rocks? Oh, Alternia had so fucking many rocks, Jade! What a shame I missed out on all these rocks! As a gentle reminder, I never left my hive unless I absolutely had to, on account of the nightly drone raids actively seeking eviscerate my existence.'

He is standing next to her, perpetually hunched over and buried in his wornout sweater, 'So, not to beat the hoofbeast's cadaver here, but idyllic seaside rock lobbing was not exactly at the top of my priority list.'

Jade snorts, bends down and picks up a smooth, gray piece of shale, 'No time like the present then!' She takes his hand and places it in his palm, lingering a second. He stills but doesn't pull away. She smiles at him, 'Let this idyllic rock lobe be the first of many pointless activities we indulge in.'

Karkat stares at it, gray on gray. His life has been cleaved into segments of inertia and violent upheaval. Hiding underneath his hive as drones hummed by, scared that he was too red, too warm. Hundreds of hours of spent in a game they were never destined to win. Then, a last ditch effort to turn everything around, saved by a timeline he never knew.

He draws his arm back and throws the stone as hard as he can. The shale expands, gaining mass and size in milliseconds. Karkat's eyes goes wide as it crashes down into the sea. He screams and in seconds he and Jade are soaked in the salty brine. She erupts in laughter, spluttering and coughing, struggling to get air back into her lungs.  
  
It takes a moment for Karkat to process this, 'Jade, what the fuck was that?' He knows what happened but his thinkpan is refusing to accept that he screamed like a tiny wiggler in front of the hot girl dog god—or whatever she was now.

'Did you decide it was a good day for the basic principles of Earth C physics to take a nice, casual stroll away from very important job of keeping my very fragile sanity from throwing itself under that apparating boulder?'

'Oh my gosh, Karkat—I, sorry—your face looked so good and cute _and then the scream._ ' Giggles keep escaping her lips, 'I'm a little manic tonight—just channeling all the fun I've kept bottled up forever.'

He sighs, 'If you do ignore the sound that may or may not have emanated my idiotic seed flap, then I may deign you worthy of forgiveness, Harley.'

‘Jade is fine, you know.’ There is a suggestion to her voice, ‘No reason to be so formal.’

Jade's brown skin reflects the cool hues of an alien moon, her clothes wet and clinging to her body. A blush creeps up his neck and Karkat curls in on himself more. 

'But, wow, we really made it,' She says, a far off look on her face.

Karkat swallows, holding back a mess of confusion and desire. They have only been a here a few days, their civilization is not yet built and a whole uncertain future stretches out before them. He has had three years to build a relationship with someone and it's comfortable, warm (even if they say nothing of what _it_ is) but here he is again. The lingering mess of Karkats past, the self-hatred, the desires, the regrets, the bad flirting.

(Jesus, he does not want to remember that).

Karkat looks around, the beach is empty, the others have gone back to start making dinner.

They are both shivering, so he shifts closer to her, not quite touching. Karkat never initiates, no, the thought of doing so leaves his survival instincts fried, his nerves in tatters and his breathing shallow.   
  
But Jade is wrapped around him in seconds. She's taller than him and Karkat fits right against her chest. He feels her quiet laughter, 'You're really warm—I like it,' she says, so, so quietly. 'The consorts and carapaces give good hugs too but you're so _real_.'

'My realness attribute is maxed out. You're fucking welcome.' Her skin is cool and salty, then, a faint whiff of limes and a crackle on his tongue. 

'I'm glad you're here.'  
  
Her voice betrays the ache of a girl who was not designed for existing at the edge of sea, of space, of life itself, but did so anyways. The raw tenderness of a wound only beginning to heal. It makes his bloodpusher squelch in that particular way: when he is curled on the lumpy loungeplank next to Dave, the movie credits are rolling and he cannot figure out if the ending suggests a pale or flushed attraction. There is no straightfoward answer and he hates that.

'We need you here,' Karkat murmurs, pressed again her. He tentatively wraps his arms around her back.  
  
'Do you?' She says, bitter. 'I might sleep through everything, only to be forced to be awake or back asleep again for moments of great cosmic relevance... or, worse, _lore dumps_.'  
  
He laughs in spite of himself.  
  
Not the game, he wants to say, _us._

'Ugh, I was just supposed to leave this crap on the ship!' He can feel her anger, a distant crackling, like a lid popping off, it's contents spilling everywhere. A faint jolt of static runs down his lobe stem.

'Everything was explained away, like, oh, it will be fine—your friends are all dead because of a choice a version of your brother made, but don't worry about it! You'll meet up with new versions of them soon enough!' She grips him tighter and he winces, 'I should be used to this by now but it does not make me feel any less terrible—thanks, Callie, I BARK hate it!'

They both pause.

'Did you just—'

'Karkat, please!' Jade half barks, half yelps.

Shame blooms in his chest. He should go, he is fucking this up, ruining a potential friendship with a girl he knew for a few days years ago. How bold of him to assume he could get through _a single romantic interaction_ without fucking it up.

Karkat looks up and Jade is about to cry.

He puts his self-loathing in reverse real fast. 'Ok, sh, no, no, no! Stop the waterworks! Or don't? Fuck, is leaking fluids from facial orifices is an important emotional outlet for humans?' He takes her hands and squeezes them, trying to calm her down.

'Look, I'm sorry about the barkbeast comment. I'm nervous for... reasons,' Karkat gestures to the general situation of _them_.  
  
'And, listen: Paradox Space has been raking our asses over it's fiery coals since before we were hatched,' he says. 'You didn't deserve any of this, I fucked it up, I gave your universe cancer, I—' _Why was blaming himself always the easiest way out?_

Karkat reaches out to wipe away a few of her tears and she catches his gaze. It's the bright, green hue of a far off sun. Of a girl who is struggling to stay grounded. Jade leans in close to him, 'Stupid, it's not your fault, and even if it was—how would you even begin to make it up to me?' It is half joke, half suggestion.

'What do you want me to do?' Karkat says in earnest.


	2. do i wade, do i dive?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the walls come down, all we really want is to be held close. 
> 
> To keep ourselves warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this was a task and half. The latter half is unedited and subject to revision but I'm so happy with how it turned out. 
> 
> Thank you to SlashedOut for the suggestions and caledfwlchthat for the writing sprints. 
> 
> Content warning for emetophobia.

'I want to touch,' She says.

He looks hesitant, a flicker of something crossing his face.

She knows about them. In-between the murmurs, touches and longing glances, it was not that hard to piece together. Everyone turned voyeurs as they watch Karkat and Dave's affection for each other bleed out in it's yearning and ambiguity.

Jade is happy for them, if not perplexed by the stasis of their relationship. Buried down further, in a place she does not venture, there is her self disgust. Curling tendrils of jealousy hiding amidst sleep and the bright, black seams of distant stars.

In a timeline, close but far away, one she will likely never know, John and Davesprite are with her—alive. Her comprehension of it feels ephemeral.

Jade chooses to remember the soft press of lips against hers, then the puncture of claws through her gut as the heavens cracked open on every side.

Her attention is drawn back to Karkat, who is now staring at her chest, apparently lost in thought. His claws gripping the hem of her shirt.

She grins down at him, 'Like what you see?'

Karkat flushes, 'Fuck, let me think for a second—this emotional whiplash is making my bulge herniate.'

' _Oh?_ ' Jade says coyly.

'That wasn't supposed to be sexy,' He hisses, burrowing his face into her chest to hide his embarrassment.

Jade teases him because she is scared to hear his answer. She tells herself that Karkat is trying and that he wants this too, but she is sixteen, hormonal and terrified to be wrong. She is too forward, too eager, too desperate. Girls are not supposed to be like this.

So she buries it all deep down.

'No kissing on the mouth.' Jade can feel his hot breath against her skin.

'What?'

He murmurs, 'That's the only condition I have—because—well, nevermind.'

Jade's heart starts to beat rapidly. Her breathing intensifies, she begins to separate from herself, everything dripping into the surreal. The edges of her self are beginning to drift away, away, away towards the stars. A call from the far off reaches of Paradox Space, through its' cracks and fissures to a dark, deep well of supermassive consumption.

Then, he kisses her on the cheek.

And, for the moment, she is brought back down.

She pulls him in tighter, quivering, threading her fingers through his coarse hair. The heat of his body keeping the ether away.

'That's okay.' She tells herself.

The sun has set, pinks and purples line the horizon of the sky; in the distance, cluster of shitty Statues of Liberty are set against it's radiant hues. The mild chill of a summer evening rolls slowly over the beach. Dinner will be ready soon, a bizarre mishmash of interdimensional junk food, fish and whatever bizarre approximation of Kraft Dinner Dave and Rose have managed to alchemize.

Jade leans down, pushing aside the fabric of his sweater and nips softly at his neck. Karkat lets out a startled chirp.

'Shit—I thought—your teeth were supposed to be dull—' He struggles to get the words out as Jade begins to suck and nibble at the sinew of his windhole.

'Canine teeth, remember?' She pulls back her lips back to show him her incisors.

A small, resentful part of him notes how blunt his own are in comparison, but she bites the same spot again and his thoughts slow to a crawl.

Jade is gentle but eager, murmuring sweet things into his aural canals as her hands slip underneath his sweater. He shivers against her touch, a discordant pleasure swimming in an influx of new sensations. Sharp kisses lavishing raw, wet bites and pricks of sour green electric shooting down his thorax to his nook. One of her hands grazes a grub scar and his body sings.

His muted gasps and chirrups intermingle with the quiet lap of waves against the shoreline.  
  
Jade pauses and looks at him, her teeth stained red and blood dribbling down her chin.

It is then that Karkat's pump biscuit does another big flip flop and he boldly concludes in his haze of punchdrunk arousal that he is very, very pale for the girl who is currently using him as some kind of fucked up barkbeast chew toy.  
  
'Are you okay? The cute chirpy sounds are a good thing, right?' A look of guilt flashes across her face and he immediately wants to make it go away.

Karkat swallows and attempts to make words but fails miserably. Instead, he just kind of smooshes his claws on the side of her face.

Jade leans into his touch, cracking a small, fanged smile.

Behind it he can feel her hunger.

( _A foot and a half, a foot and a half, his head on your lap for an hour or two, back to a foot and a half, fist bump, a tentative palm on his shoulder as you listen to his music that you secretly love_ ).  
  
'Maybe we should go inside?' She suggests.  
  
He nods, panfucked, surging in hormones that are keeping a universe's worth of neuroses and questions at bay. He is curled in her arms, so close, the sour electric creeping everywhere, consuming them in a million volts of jacked up, matter warping lime buzz.

A quick flash and it's over.

He lifts his head up and glances over Jade's shoulder. They are in his respiteblock deep in the meteor. Gray, dusty and unused. The movie posters on his walls are peeling off. His old husktop sits at the wobbly productivity stand across from the torn up loungeplank he and Gamzee cuddled on once. In the corner, his makeshift recuperacoon stands alone.

A couple of Dave's old shirts lay strewn across the floor.

There is a reason he only comes in here to sleep on occasion and if his aggravation sponge were not on mute he would be begging her to take them literally anywhere else.

Jade surveys the room for a moment, saying nothing.  
  
'Don't judge,' he manages to croak out.

'Why would I?' Her hands run through his hair, touching the base of his horn. 'It's not like my room on the ship was much better; it wasn't special or anything, just a place I went to sleep.'

It was funny how easily sleep seemed to elude her on that ship. There she would lay, tightly curled up under a thin sheet, sometimes alone, sometimes with Nanna, sleep only coming in fits and starts. Her dreams were frenetic: dimension hopping, cartoonish chase sequences, always after someone or something that couldn't be caught. It was Becquerel, it was John, Davesprite, Rose, the cast was varied and wide. Then, an unknown force would yank her back and she would watch as the distance grew between her and her prey, body paralyzed.

She would awaken, gasping, like space had been sucked out of her, soaked in sweat and shaking.  
  
Jade gazes down at Karkat, his usual pinched expression now placid and relaxed. Deep-set, orange eyes half closed, looking up and stealing slow glances, waiting for her to happen to him.

So she does.

She digs her fingers into his scalp and bites down on his jugular like he's her prey. He gasps, arching against her, Jade is not sure if it's because of pain or pleasure and she tells herself not wonder. She works her way down to his clavicle, growling in frustration when his sweater keeps getting in the way.

Jade yanks at it, trying to pull it off and Karkat jerks back making a noise somewhere between a click and a hiss.

'Slower.' He sounds raspy, uneven, as if English no longer quite fits his mouth.

Jade swallows and nods. Her canine instincts at war with the doubts and questions racing through her mind. She then spots a raggedy-looking blanket lying on the couch and an idea comes to mind.

Jade offers him her hand and Karkat searches her face for a moment before taking it.

The couch smells something like stale vinegar and she does her best not think about why as she leads him to sit. He leans back into the cushions, tentative, body and mind caught in the loop between vulnerability and pleasure.

'It's okay,' Jade whispers, her eyes meeting his, 'I'll take care of you.' He is giving her what she wants after all.

He chirps at her softly and she takes that as a go ahead.

'Lift your arms up.' Karkat gives her another look but does as she says. Jade gently removes his sweater and, grabbing the nearby blanket, drapes it around his shoulders.

'Better?'

He nods and she smiles.

'Good.' She straddles him and grinds down, 'This will feel so good, I promise.'

She marks his clavicle, the soft skin underneath his arms, his stomach, his chest. His quiet chirrups turning into keens. She can see them blooming into dark, gray mottled bruises and a feral part of her curls in satisfaction. Jade rolls her hips, seeking heat and friction. His hands rest tentatively on the small of her back and she grins, wagging her tail.

'It's okay, Karkat. I give you explicit permission to squeeze my ass.'

He groans in annoyance but grabs it nonetheless, claws digging in and encouraging her forward. She ruts against him, her gasps becoming more vocal and chaotic.

'You—you're—doing so well,' She murmurs, kissing him on the forehead. Karkat seems to like that, groaning and bucking his hips up to meet hers.

The scent of spit, rust and vinegar overwhelm her senses. His heat draws her in. This is the most alive Jade has ever felt: the headiness of desire, closeness, reciprocity drowning out the void of space.

Karkat's hand reaches between their legs and gropes at her shorts.

Jade pulls back too quickly, head knocking Karkat's chin in the process.

'Fuck!' He glowers up at her.

She doesn't register his words because the dysphoria hits her quickly: nausea washing over her. A reminder of what is between her legs and what she is now. Her dog, her closest companion for the first thirteen years now a part of her, in every sick essence of the word. Bestial in nature, she is not sure where Becquerel ends and she begins.

Karkat's expression cycles between anger, alarm and concern.

'Sorry,' she manages to get out, extricating herself off of him and standing. 'I—I—didn't think **—'**

 **'** What did I do?' His voice is still rough.

The nausea comes in harder and it's hard to stay upright. Everything is spinning. The floor is too far away and Jade feels like she is standing on a precipice.

'Jade?' He says, concern growing, 'Are you okay? What's going on?'

She collapses onto the floor, retching as sour bile hits the back of her throat. The cold of space and crackling lime spilling out all around her. The couch disappears and one of Dave's shirts grows three times in size.

Karkat is terrified and confused.

But he's dealt with worse.

He kneels next to her, 'Do what you have to do. I'm not attached to anything in here. Minus my body and even that is fucking dubious.'

She barely nods, shaking, as another wave hits her and she retches again. Her powers cracking through him like never before. It takes all of his energy to stay present.

'Can I touch you? Would that help?'

'Yes—please—' She says between gasps.

He removes her glasses and pulls her hair out of the way, rubbing soothing circles on her back, as Jade fights to keep everything down. She is hunched over, her entire body dry heaving. Karkat does his best to quell the roiling of his own digestion sac, disgusted with himself for doing this to her.

They stay that way for a while. Karkat gently stroking her back, holding her hair, as Jade slowly pulls herself back together. When she finally manages to sit upright, Karkat scoots back, unsure if she still wants to be touched by him.

'Better?' He asks, uncertain.

Wiping her mouth, she turns around to look at him, 'I'm so sorry about that.'

'For what? Leaping away from my bulge like it was putrid writhing hellspawn? Admittedly, it was a bit of a wound to my already diseased ego, but I'll recover.'

She stares at him.

'Am I incorrect in that assumption?' More than ever, Karkat wishes he could just shut the fuck up.

'Not everything is about your insecurities, dumbass!' Jade snaps at him, ' I was actually looking forward to seeing your cute tentacle dick thing—I wanted to suck on it!'

'Come fucking on Jade, you don't need force more lies up your protein chute to make me feel better.' His wraps the blanket tighter around his shoulders.

She sighs, standing up, still slightly wobbly on her feet. Karkat wants to get up to give her support but, stubborn, he remains seated. She glances at Dave's now oversized shirt on the floor and mumbles something under breath.

He gazes up at her, defensive, 'What?'

'Either you get it through your skull that it's not about you or I'm leaving. I feel calmer when you touch me, I think you're cute and I'm sure your junk is cute too—this isn't rocket science, Karkat. I don't want to talk about why, I just want to cuddle because I feel like shit. So, can we _please_ go back to five minutes ago when you were being sweet and caring?'

He can see a thousand flaws he could pick at, an arsenal of words he could launch at her, but then he thinks of Terezi.

Always unsure of her intentions, he asked too many questions and hid his feelings behind barbed comments and insults. He vacillated between flushed and caliginous with her, arguing with past and future selves over elaborate plots to win her back in a perverse theatre of the mind. He never believed she just wanted him for him.

And when he realized that it was too late. Vriska happened. Dave happened.

So he chooses to believe her.

'It's really not?' He stays buried in the blanket.

'No,' She smiles at him, looking exasperated and weary.

He slowly gets up and pads over to her, 'Ok. Take off those disgusting clothes and we can get into the recuperacoon.'

Her ears perk up and her tail begins to gently wag, 'You're inviting me to your goo bed? Good save.' She strips off her top revealing nothing underneath but her bare, dark breasts. Soft, white fur follows the curves of her hips, before plunging beneath the band of her shorts. Jade pauses for a moment, looking down at herself.

'Gonna leave these on,' she says and Karkat knows not to ask why.

He makes her turn around as he undresses, self-conscious, leaving on his boxers on and keeping the blanket clutched tightly around him like a grub security quilt. He shuts off the illumination circuit on the wall panel and the room is swallowed in dark, only a faint glow emanating from the sopor.

'So will I be able to breathe in there?' Jade asks.

'It should—it worked for—' He stops himself, 'Rose—and Kanaya.'

Early on during their time on the meteor, Dave jumped into his recuperacoon as a joke. Karkat had shrieked and yelled at him to get out, unsure if human physiology wouldn't dissolve seconds after entering the sopor. But that didn't happen. The gelatinous substance sloshing over the side as Dave was enveloped, his laughter and words becoming muted. Karkat watched as he floated, doing idiotic poses at first, like he was taking one of his ironic self-captured palmhusk images. Slowly, however, Dave stilled, beginning to drift as the crawling sleepiness of sopor overtook him; his shirt floating up ever so slightly to show the taut of his stomach.

Karkat hears a soft _plop._

Jade is staring at him through the small, circular pane of the recuperacoon. Eyes effervescent in the sopor and hair fanned out around her like seaweed. _Come in_ , she mouths, her body an open invitation.

He hesitates for a moment.

( _He grunts as he pulls Dave out of the recuperacoon, drowsy, his shades askew and sopor sluicing off of his pyjamas. Karkat catches a flash of his red eyes and has to look away.)_

But Karkat pushes the memories aside, to be dissected and aggravated over tomorrow. Crawling up the incline to the edge of platform, he looks down at her, exposed and vulnerable, waiting. Jade makes room for him and he slides in. The sopor consumes him, like a sponge leaking liquid. He settles in her arms, her hands wrapped around his thorax and they float.

The dull buzz of the sopor overtakes her first, her troubled expression becoming serene and still. Conciliatory feelings move through him quietly and his pan begins to drift, sleep coming easier than expected.

At one point, in-between dreams, Karkat thinks he sees a figure in the doorway. He can't be sure because it's gone just as quickly.

And huddled against her chest, he slips back into the folds of sleep.

It's best one he's had in ages.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! As always, kudos, comments and bookmarks are greatly appreciated.


End file.
